Boundaries of Pain
by Briereader
Summary: After a terrible loss, Hermione looks back on her life with Draco. This is a short companion to my other one-shot, "Because They Know." Warning – Character Death and Slight AU.
1. Boundaries of Pain

**Boundaries of Pain**

**You left me, sweet, two legacies, -**

**A legacy of love**

**A Heavenly Father would content,**

**Had He the offer of;**

**You left me boundaries of pain**

**Capacious as the sea,**

**Between eternity and time,**

**Your consciousness and me.**

_**\- Bequest**_** by Emily Dickenson**


	2. The Morning after Death

**Part 1**

**The Bustle in a House**

**The Morning after Death**

**Is solemnest of industries**

**Enacted upon Earth –**

**The Sweeping up the Heart**

**And putting Love away**

**We shall not want to use again**

**Until Eternity.**

**\- By Emily Dickenson**

The flower lies on the fireplace mantle, preserved years beyond its time by her spell. It still looks as fresh as it had the day he had given it to her, as if it had just now been plucked by his slender hands. **Hermione smiles, the same sad smile that has always come with her remembrances of him. **Draco had laughed at her for enchanting it to stay that way, still looking and smelling as wonderful as it had when he had given it to her.

"I can always give you another one, you know," he had said, before kissing her until she's gasping for breath.

"I know," she had replied when she was able to speak again, but the flower remained charmed anyways, as if she had somehow sensed that his words were about to be proven far less true than either of them could imagine.

**That day had been their wedding anniversary. It was barely a week afterwards when the news came that he was dead. **

She was researching in the library again; looking up old healing methods for use in Saint Mungo's and every once in a while looking down at her stomach and humming the slightest bit. She had been glad to be assigned to Research after completing Healer Training (meaning she could stay at the Manor to do her work), especially today, as she was planning on telling him the good news, having finally confirmed what she had suspected for some time.

When the floo rings in the parlor she looks up at the clock in surprise, because _had she really been in her that long? _And before she can laugh and remind herself that _just because it only had two hands doesn't mean that it's a normal clock, _she notices where his name was pointed and _no that can't be right. _

The clock was modeled after Mrs. Weasley's amazing not-quite-a-timepiece but Hermione must have made it wrong somehow because _that couldn't be real. _But she gets up and rushes to the parlor anyways, because _what if it was? _And then Harry's solemn face appears in the fireplace and he calls her 'Mrs. Malfoy' in his official auror voice, and she isn't 'the Smartest Witch of Our Age' for nothing and _god this can't be happening._

**But no matter how often the words 'no, no, no' pound in her head, the truth remains the same.**

Draco was tracking a suspect when the building he was in exploded, killing him and three other people instantly.

_**Gone**_

_**Gone**_

_**Gone**_

**The word echoes in her head like a broken record. **

"I'm sorry about Malfoy."

Ron pays her a visit after the funeral (_is it still a funeral if they couldn't really find a body?), _and she tries to be calm but she feels so hollow and all she want to do is curl up in her bed, painfully empty as it is, and go to sleep and _god she's so tired of the condolences and the pity. _Her blank mask is starting to crumble and she's either going to scream at him or break down any moment now and _breaking down is probably a better idea._

"God Ron, I can't deal with this anymore!"

The tears are starting to come now and Ron is getting a little freaked out, but _thank god he's here _because she needs an old friend's shoulder to cry on.

"Go on, Hermione." Ron's voice soothes her as she sobs uncontrollably, her face buried in his robes. "Let it all out."

It's some time later before she stops crying, but he waits with her until the storm has passed. Finally the racking sobs stop shaking her body and she wipes half-heartedly at the tears that continue to fall on her salt-streaked cheeks.

"Go home to Luna," she orders, smiling sadly at her friend's worried face even as she scrubs at her read eyes. "Thank you for staying with me, but you should go home to your wife."

"Yeah." He stands up to go, but stops by the fireplace and looks back at her warily. "You sure…?"

"I'll be fine," she reassures him, and he leaves in a whoosh of green flame that illuminates the white tulip that still lay on the mantel.

She stares at it for a moment, and then crosses the room on unsteady legs to pick it up with trembling fingers. As the pain in her chest begins to mount, her tears start to fall again because _what's the point of being a witch if stuff like this can still happen to her, _and she curls up in his old chair and hold the bloom to her chest, remembering happier times.


	3. To Remember and be Sad

**Part 2**

**Remember me when I am gone away,**

**Gone far away into the silent land;**

**When you can no more hold me by the hand,**

**Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.**

**Remember me when no more day by day**

**You tell me of our future that you planned:**

**Only remember me; you understand**

**It will be late to counsel then or pray.**

**Yet if you should forget me for a while**

**And afterwards remember, do not grieve:**

**For if the darkness and corruption leave**

**A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,**

**Better by far you should forget and smile**

**Than that you should remember and be sad.**

_**\- Remember**_** by Christina Rossetti**

**The first memory she has of Draco as the man she grew to love doesn't even belong to her.**

Harry and Ron told her afterwards about how, when she was being tortured by Bellatrix, Malfoy (Eventually Ron's the only one who doesn't call him Draco, but back then he was still just the Slytherin from school) had convinced Dobby to apparate him into the basement where her friends were being held and gave them back their wands.

"Just take me with you," Malfoy had asked, before Dobby disapparated with Luna and Ollivander and Wormtail opened the door just to be taken out by Ron's well-aimed stunner.

And so she had looked up from her collapsed position on the floor to see the three boys storm into the drawing room of Malfoy Manor shooting spells every-which-way. Part of it was probably due to the aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse, but she could have sworn that Malfoy had smiled, a fierce, wild smile, when he saw Harry's _petrificus totalus _catch Lucius Malfoy in the chest.

When he offered her his hand for apparition she took it without question, because somehow she knew she could trust him. And later, when they arrived at Shell Cottage and everyone looked at him with distrust in their eyes and their hands near their wands, she was the one to always take his side, both because the others were all acting like idiots and because she wanted to show him that he could trust her, too.

**The glares and accusations she received were nothing when he gave her a thankful smile.**

When the Battle of Hogwarts began, she found him fighting a deatheater that had broken through the wards (and both duelists seemed strangely excited to hurt the other). When Draco was knocked to the ground, the deatheater turned to fire a spell at Harry, who was busy dueling someone else.

Just as Harry stunned his opponent the other deatheater's mask fell off and Lucius Malfoy raised his wand at Harry's back and she screamed because _she's too far away to do anything _and Draco called _reducto _from bloodied lips. The spell sent his father flying into the opposite wall at such a speed that Hermione knew the crack she heard must have been his neck.

Later, when Harry's busy with the pensieve and everyone took care of the wounded and began to mourn the dead, she sat with Draco as he finally cried and she joined him in his tears, because while she may not have killed her father, she'd lost so many friends that day, and her innocence had already been shattered but she still felt its loss.

**When she told him about how empty she felt, he nodded in understanding, because he felt the same way. **

They went back to Hogwarts for and 'eighth year' together while Ron and Harry became Aurors, ostensibly because he had nowhere to go while the manor was being cleaned out by the Aurors and her parents were still in Australia with modified memories, but both of them knew it was actually because the war broke them and _what better place than Hogwarts to be put back together again?_

The year they spent together while going back to school strengthened the strange friendship that they already had, and she's certain they were already in love with each other before the Battle of Hogwarts, let alone the Anniversary Ball, so their first kiss wasn't nearly as awkward as their past might dictate, but merely long-awaited.

**Ron never understood why she loves 'her Slytherin,' but she never really expected him to.**

They never really ended up dating, but instead just became closer and closer in their friendship/courtship, so that eventually it's rare that you ever see Hermione with Draco, or vice versa. It had been more than three months since their first kiss when Ron finally snapped.

"Honestly Hermione, either stop bringing Malfoy along all the time or just marry the guy already!"

She snorted and raised an eyebrow at Ron as he blushed and everyone else snickered at his outburst, and then suddenly turned on Draco. "Well? Are you going to ask or not?"

With a surprisingly sheepish smile the blond pulls a ring out of his pocket and gets down on one knee, while Ginny _aww_ed and Harry burst out laughing at Ron's horrified expression.

"Hermione Jean Granger, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she said, with a determined nod of her head that was offset by the beaming smile on her face. "I will."

He put the ring on her finger and they kissed, ignoring Ron's protest that _'that wasn't what he meant!' _and _'honestly guys, that's disgusting!' _

**Ginny said afterwards that, while his proposal may have been rather less than romantic, their wedding was the most amazing thing she'd ever been to, and, privately, the newlyweds agree. **

They didn't go on a honeymoon, but instead took a couple weeks off after finishing their respective job training (Auror prep for him and a Healing course for her), in which they moved to Malfoy Manor and started redecorating it so that it no longer reminded them of the war. Hermione developed an interest in the gardens, so even after they started going to work again and his mother fell ill they made a habit of walking together through the grounds every day.

On their anniversary, Draco stopped by a flower bed that Hermione had never touched because his mother had been the one to cultivate it before Narcissa's illness confined her to the house. With careful movements he snipped off a tulip, after looking at it thoughtfully, handed it to her.

"I love you," he said, and to Hermione it felt just like the first time he said the words to her, so she smiled because _god he's amazing _and _how in the world could I have hated him once?_

"I know," she replied, and then she kissed him on the cheek and added "I love you too."

**When they got home she put the flower up on the mantel of the parlor's fireplace, after enchanting it to stay fresh for a long time to come. **


End file.
